Rating: 
Summary: 4 stars for the book PLUS 1 MORE FOR THE Narrator!!!
Review: The joy of listening to the unabridged version of the audiobook is hearing the elegant Jewish language slang used by Mr. Silver. He put us in the mood and in the timeframe. Well done. The book itself is elegant also. My only complaint is that its ending was unsatisfactory...we needed just a bit more surprise at the end. The rest is more than worthwhile and you'll love the narration if you choose to listen.
Rating: 
Summary: An allegorical masterpiece of our times.
Review: Roth has provided us with an allegorical masterpiece of the past 50 years, with all of its wrenching changes. Although his focus may be on an American Jewish-Irish family he touches a nerve in all immigrant groups who came, sought and found the American Dream. But alas, he forces us to see that dreams are elusive and cannot last. We are buffeted by the times and circumstances in which we live. They control and form us.
Rating:
Summary: Good book, but not one of Roth's better books.
Review: I've read "Counterlife", "The Facts", "Patrimony", "Portnoy's Complaint", "Zuckerman Unbound", and "Goodbye Columbus". I love Phillip Roth's work. But this book, "American Pastoral", didn't do it for me. Maybe it was because he did something different in writing about someone so unlike himself. At times, Roth has flahes of brilliance...Somehow, he doesn't quite pull it off in writing from the Swede's point of view. The Swede's thoughts and words often sounded like Phillip Roth/Nathan Zuckerman. But in any case, I am glad I read the book. I look forward to reading more books by Phillip Roth.
Rating:
Summary: Wise, gentle and sad
Review: My first Roth since Portnoy swayed finally by the ecstatic reviews. An accessible, charming read that is both rewarding and shocking. The Swede (echoes of Updike's Rabbit) represents generations of liberal Jews who thought that soft-left values and the memory of what happened to their parents and cousins in Europe was enough to keep America pure, innocent and healthy. But he didn't count on Vietnam, he didn't count on tricky Dicky and he didn't count on growing older and therefore obsolete. A wonderfully wise book about being old in America, about one's time having passed and about discovering that it was all for nothing.
Rating:
Summary: An intense and consistent voice
Review: Wow. I just finished reading this book. What strikes me is the intensity of the voice, particularly the relentless driving forward as we are sped to the conclusion. I read some of the comments on this page last week before starting American Pastoral, and the criticism that stuck with me (and left me apprehensive) as I began was that the book was too much rumination and not enough story. I would disagree. The ruminating voice, the voice that expands and diverts and tangents and returns again works simply because that IS the consistent voice of this book. I also liked that while we are told the story from the Swede's point of view, and that his point of view builds throughout the book so that we move from initially being outside of it (at the high school reunion and before) to being totally immersed in it, that there is more than enough room in the arguments from others (particularly Jerry's during the phone call to Florida) to question whether the Swede's viewpoint is sound just because it is the dominant viewpoint. My favourite moment was the serious unraveling of the dinner party and the popping up of a most un-Swede-like shadow in nasty little thoughts as one thing after another fell apart ("...when Dawn and Orcutt ran off to live in this cardboard house, he and Sheila could run off to Puerto Rico after all. And if, as a result, his father dropped dead, well, they'd just have to bury him. That's what they'd do: bury him deep in the ground"). But even then, before anything can build for long, there is the diversion back to Dawn and his adoration of Dawn. As for one critic here who suggested that the book was hard to follow, after reading Gravity's Rainbow for the first time just previous to beginning this book I have no difficulty in confirming that American Pastoral is completely, marvelously lucid.
Rating:
Summary: Job in the '60s
Review: The plot of American Pastoral can be described briefly. Indeed, the plot details are so few and far between, the story of Swede Levov could probably be told in a short story. But Roth, who apparently despises indentation, enjoys rambling endlessly about ... well, everything. Granted, Roth has a gift for prose, so his ramblings are more often then not well-written and carefully researched. But, they are ramblings nontheless, and one is always impatiently trying to slog one's way through this two-page long paragraph in order to get to some PLOT. This is a novel of emotion and inner pain, which Roth is effective in capturing. 400 pages of pain is a bit much, though, especially when nothing is happening. My favorite line in the novel: Merry, the daughter, when asked to write about what life really means, is able to summarize her thoughts in a single line. "Life is the short period of time in which we are alive."
Rating:
Summary: A well deserved award.
Review: It seems Roth has gotten away from the cliches of his later works. Often only the titles have changed. American Pastoral shows what Roth is capable of writing. There is much more depth to this story which show how one man's American dream turned sour. In times of great change does anyone have it all? Roth has won a lot of awards of late which I don't think he deserved. This book wins on its own merits and not on Phillip's reputation. I liked his sly dig at post-modernism when he described Swede as post-Jewish and his wife as post-Catholic.
Rating: 
Summary: What have I missed?
Review: Frankly, the first book I read by Mr. Roth, The Great American Novel, about 25 years ago, was my last. . . until I gave him a reprieve with American Pastoral. The reason why I decided to read this one was based on the reviews by the so-called experts. I wish I had had more faith in my instincts. I was just as bored this time around as the first. Then again, what have I missed? Someone(s) must think very highly of this work to award Mr. Roth a Pulitzer.
Rating:
Summary: American Horror
Review: Much of one's feelings about this story might depend on your age and whether one has lived and seen enough to believe in the characters and the plausability of the situation that Roth has recorded. An old cliche, but the late sixties were a strange and terrible time, and it did produce characters like Merry in families like the Swede's. It has been intensified, of course,and set in a biblical context. Roth says much about America that is hard to read, but morbidly honest. .
Rating:
Summary: Philip Roth is the voice of my generation
Review: Paradise (remembered and imagined) -- the first section of American Pastoral -- is a gift from Roth to all of us with memories of that time and place, America of the 50's and the 60s. Dare "outsiders" (a Jewish sports hero and marine; a Catholic "Miss New Jersey"--)contend for the American dream. Of course Roth says no. What's wrong with the book, though is that all the characters (even Rita Cohen) are just as verbal, intelligent, thoughtful, yes extraordinary, as Roth alter ego, Nathan Zuckerman, thus unreal in their fictive roles. Would a good editor have dared suggest that the over-the-top vitriol of rita Cohen (the serpent in the garden or whoever tempted saint whomever) could be done without. Also, with respect for roth's expertise in the glove trade, he is no melville, and gloves are not whales: nor is the Swede a bard. Finally, this is an important restatement,lest we forget,of a familiar message and I am glad for the opportunity to have heard Nathan's voice again.
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